Church-based program in Rockford targets minority health

Mike DeDoncker

Friday

Feb 25, 2011 at 12:01 AMFeb 25, 2011 at 10:21 AM

ROCKFORD — Debra Rogers used to worry because she knows high blood pressure and diabetes run in her family. When she turned 45 a couple of years ago, the Rockford school bus driver decided she wanted to do something to decrease her chances of being affected by those diseases, but wasn’t sure where to start.

ROCKFORD — Debra Rogers used to worry because she knows high blood pressure and diabetes run in her family. When she turned 45 a couple of years ago, the Rockford school bus driver decided she wanted to do something to decrease her chances of being affected by those diseases, but wasn’t sure where to start.

She found her answer at church — in the Changing Hearts initiative of the Rockford Health Council, which serves minority community members at Liberty Baptist Church, 3500 Preston St., and St. Edward Catholic Church, 3004 11th St.

One Sunday each month at both churches, men and women — and sometimes children — sit down in a friendly, relaxed atmosphere and offer up an arm to have their blood pressure measured by volunteers from the church and the student body at the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Rockford. Changing Hearts addresses the members’ cardiovascular health and health disparities for minority populations, both of which are among top national health care issues.

“I thought it was a good opportunity for me to participate, because I knew high blood pressure and diabetes had affected my mom and dad and their siblings as they got older,” Rogers said of her first Changing Hearts blood pressure test in the summer of 2009. “I was looking at it long-term and saying, 'What can I do to prevent me from needing insulin or having some kind of problem?' ”

David Kendall, coordinator of Liberty Baptist’s health ministry team, helped the church’s pastor, the Rev. Herbert Johnson Jr., get the program up and running nearly three years ago. Kendall has been involved in community health initiatives for more than 12 years and said, “This works better than health fairs, not that I’m knocking health fairs."

“The reason that this works so well is that we can see the individual on a regular basis. If we see them this month, we’re going to see them again next month so we have the opportunity to follow up with them and we can track their progress.”

Except for one time when she said she was under a lot of stress, Rogers’ readings have been good.

“It was relief,” she said. “Being the age I am, I’m always joking with the doctor and I say that I try. I’ll be asking a lot of questions and they’ll be asking me if I’m aware of this or that. It has helped me to work toward my goals.”

While Rogers has had success in the program, Rockford Health Council Executive Director Becky Cook Kendall and Dr. Steve Lidvall, a family practice physician and chairman of the Changing Hearts leadership team, said that, as of January, 60 percent of the participants at both churches who are 31 or older still had high blood pressure, called hypertension, meaning their blood pressure readings 140/90 or higher.

Another 15 percent at Liberty Baptist and 23 percent at St. Edward were prehypertensive, meaning their blood pressure readings were higher than a normal reading of 120/80 but less than 140/90.

Lidvall said initial blood pressure readings for Liberty Baptist’s participants in the 18-to-30 age range were even more concerning.

“There are 251 participants at Liberty Baptist and the number of young people (ages 18 to 30) tested amounts to 50 people. Only eight of those 50 people have normal blood pressure. That’s the alarming statistic right there,” Lidvall said.

“So from a public health point of view, wearing my other hat, you say, geez, we have to do something about that and that’s the same thing you see in Youth Fit for Life and some of the other organizations like the YMCA with Get Moving. We’re seeing this all the time, that young people are having high blood pressure in their teens.”

David Kendall said the program, which has 206 participants in just one year at St. Edward, has identified people who needed immediate attention when their blood pressure was taken.

“We had that happen more than once,” Kendall said, “and we’ve had some people who, as a matter of fact, probably shouldn’t have gotten up that morning and we took them right on to the hospital. We were getting quite a bit of that when we first started. We don’t seem to have as much of that anymore.”

Kendall said Changing Hearts borrowed parts of models from other communities, “but those models all used people from outside the community itself to administer the program, we did it with volunteers.”

Cook Kendall said the Rockford Health Council acts as technical adviser to help build awareness of the dangers of hypertension and getting lifestyle change to the forefront of people’s minds.

“The anchor is the screening, the other anchor is the church and the bully pulpit is the pastor at the church,” Cook Kendall said, “but the key piece to making it successful is the volunteers.

“It’s all about putting the framework in place to build awareness and to get the people to under the importance. If there is anything that I have been able to notice anecdotally from the memberships at the churches, it’s that the people have gone to their doctors more frequently, they talk more about it, they are less sporadic in participating in the testing and they are paying more attention to what are the contributing factors to high blood pressure and other health problems.”

Cook Kendall said the program is beginning an evaluation of its progress and she hopes to, someday, see other churches establish the volunteer infrastructure and pastoral leadership necessary to expand the program. She would also like to see the screening become the front end of a program that leads participants to a more formal program for making and sustaining healthy lifestyle changes.

“We’re seeing that we have made progress and that there is still work to do,” she said. “The challenge for us is that it’s more than getting screened. It is building awareness and getting the people to say that they are seeing progress and are willing to continue.

“We can screen all day long, but there has to be a balance between the doctor giving you medication to monitor and help your blood pressure. We would like that healthy lifestyle program that helps to get people exercising and learning how to eat correctly so that we can see that it’s more than medication that is making the change.”